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"HE HATH SOUNDED FORTH A TRUMPET that shall never call retreat. HE IS SIFTING OUT THE HEARTS OF MEN before His judgment seat. OH, BE SWIFT OUR SOULS TO ANSWER HIM, BE JUBILANT OUR FEET, Our God is marching on."
--Albert J. Beveridge.
Remember that two sentences, or two parts of the same sentence, which contain changes of thought, cannot possibly be given effectively in the same key. Let us repeat, every big change of thought requires a big change of pitch. What the beginning student will think are big changes of pitch will be monotonously alike. Learn to speak some thoughts in a very high tone--others in a very, very low tone. DEVELOP RANGE. It is almost impossible to use too much of it.
HAPPY AM I THAT THIS MISSION HAS BROUGHT MY FEET AT LAST TO PRESS NEW ENGLAND'S HISTORIC SOIL and my eyes to the knowledge of her beauty and her thrift. Here within touch of Plymouth Rock and Bunker Hill--WHERE WEBSTER THUNDERED and Longfellow sang, Emerson thought AND CHANNING PREACHED--HERE IN THE CRA-DLE OF AMERICAN LETTERS and almost of American liberty, I hasten to make the obeisance that every American owes New England when first he stands uncovered in her mighty presence. Strange apparition! This stern and unique figure--carved from the ocean and the wilderness--its majesty kindling and growing amid the storms of winter and of wars--until at last the gloom was broken, ITS BEAUTY DISCLOSED IN THE SUNSHINE, and the heroic workers rested at its base--while startled kings and emperors gazed and marveled that from the rude touch of this handful cast on a bleak and unknown shore should have come the embodied genius of human government AND THE PERFECTED MODEL OF HUMAN LIBERTY! God bless the memory of those immortal workers, and prosper the fortunes of their living sons--and perpetuate the inspiration of their handiwork....
Far to the South, Mr. President, separated from this section by a line--once defined in irrepressible difference, once traced in fratricidal blood, AND NOW, THANK GOD, BUT A VANISHING SHADOW--lies the fairest and richest domain of this earth. It is the home of a brave and hospitable people. THERE IS CENTERED ALL THAT CAN PLEASE OR PROSPER HUMANKIND. A PERFECT CLIMATE ABOVE a fertile soil yields to the husbandman every product of the temperate zone.
There, by night the cotton whitens beneath the stars, and by day THE WHEAT LOCKS THE SUNSHINE IN ITS BEARDED SHEAF. In the same field the clover steals the fragrance of the wind, and tobacco catches the quick aroma of the rains. THERE ARE MOUNTAINS STORED WITH EXHAUSTLESS TREASURES: forests--vast and primeval; and rivers that, tumbling or loitering, run wanton to the sea. Of the three essential items of all industries--cotton, iron and wood--that region has easy control. IN COTTON, a fixed monopoly--IN IRON, proven supremacy--IN TIMBER, the reserve supply of the Republic. From this assured and permanent advantage, against which artificial conditions cannot much longer prevail, has grown an amazing system of industries. Not maintained by human contrivance of tariff or capital, afar off from the fullest and cheapest source of supply, but resting in divine assurance, within touch of field and mine and forest--not set amid costly farms from which competition has driven the farmer in despair, but amid cheap and sunny lands, rich with agriculture, to which neither season nor soil has set a limit--this system of industries is mounting to a splendor that shall dazzle and illumine the world. THAT, SIR, is the picture and the promise
of my home--A LAND BETTER AND FAIRER THAN I HAVE TOLD YOU, and yet but fit setting in its material excellence for the loyal and gentle quality of its citizenship.
This hour little needs the LOYALTY THAT IS LOYAL TO ONE SECTION and yet holds the other in enduring suspicion and estrangement. Give us the broad and perfect loyalty that loves and trusts GEORGIA alike with Massachusetts--that knows no SOUTH, no North, no EAST, no West, but endears with equal and patriotic love every foot of our soil, every State of our Union.
A MIGHTY DUTY, SIR, AND A MIGHTY INSPIRATION impels every one of us tonight to lose in patriotic consecration
WHATEVER ESTRANGES, WHATEVER DIVIDES.
WE, SIR, are Americans--AND WE STAND FOR HUMAN LIBERTY! The uplifting force of the American idea is under every throne on earth. France, Brazil--THESE ARE OUR VICTORIES. To redeem the earth from kingcraft and oppression--THIS
IS OUR MISSION! AND WE SHALL NOT FAIL. God has sown in our soil the seed of His millennial harvest, and He will not lay the sickle to the ripening crop until His full and perfect day has come. OUR HISTORY, SIR, has been a constant and expanding miracle, FROM PLYMOUTH ROCK AND JAMESTOWN, all the way--aye, even from the hour when from the voiceless and traceless ocean a new world rose to the sight of the inspired sailor. As we approach the fourth centennial of that stupendous
day--when the old world will come to marvel and to learn amid our gathered treasures--let us resolve to crown the miracles of our past with the spectacle of a Republic, compact, united INDISSOLUBLE IN THE BONDS OF LOVE--loving from the Lakes
to the Gulf--the wounds of war healed in every heart as on every hill, serene and resplendent AT THE SUMMIT OF HUMAN ACHIEVEMENT AND EARTHLY GLORY, blazing out the path and making clear the way up which all the nations of the earth,
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must come in God's appointed time!
--Henry W. Grady, The Race Problem.
... I WOULD CALL HIM NAPOLEON, but Napoleon made his way to empire over broken oaths and through a sea of blood. This man never broke his word. "No Retaliation" was his great motto and the rule of his life; AND THE LAST WORDS UTTERED
TO HIS SON IN FRANCE WERE THESE: "My boy, you will one day go back to Santo Domingo; forget that France murdered your father." I WOULD CALL HIM CROMWELL, but Cromwell was only a soldier, and the state he founded went down with him into his grave. I WOULD CALL HIM WASHINGTON, but the great Virginian held slaves. THIS MAN RISKED HIS EMPIRE rather than permit the slave-trade in the humblest village of his dominions.
YOU THINK ME A FANATIC TONIGHT, for you read history, not with your eyes, BUT WITH YOUR PREJUDICES. But fifty years hence, when Truth gets a hearing, the Muse of History will put PHOCION for the Greek, and BRUTUS for the Roman, HAMPDEN for England, LAFAYETTE for France, choose WASHINGTON as the bright, consummate flower of our EARLIER civilization, AND JOHN BROWN the ripe fruit of our NOONDAY, then, dipping her pen in the sunlight, will write in the clear blue, above them all, the name of THE SOLDIER, THE STATESMAN, THE MARTYR, TOUSSAINT L'OUVERTURE.
--Wendell Phillips, Toussaint l'Ouverture.
Drill on the following selections for change of pitch: Beecher's "Abraham Lincoln," p. 76; Seward's "Irrepressible Conflict," p. 67; Everett's "History of Liberty," p. 78; Grady's "The Race Problem," p. 36; and Beveridge's "Pass Prosperity Around," p. 470.
CHAPTER V
EFFICIENCY THROUGH CHANGE OF PACE
Hear how he clears the points o' Faith
Wi' rattlin' an' thumpin'!
Now meekly calm, now wild in wrath, He's stampin' an' he's jumpin'.
--Robert Burns, Holy Fair.
The Latins have bequeathed to us a word that has no precise equivalent in our tongue, therefore we have accepted it, body un-
changed--it is the word tempo, and means rate of movement, as measured by the time consumed in executing that movement.
Thus far its use has been largely limited to the vocal and musical arts, but it would not be surprising to hear tempo applied to more concrete matters, for it perfectly illustrates the real meaning of the word to say that an ox-cart moves in slow tempo, an express
train in a fast tempo. Our guns that fire six hundred times a minute, shoot at a fast tempo; the old muzzle loader that required three minutes to load, shot at a slow tempo. Every musician understands this principle: it requires longer to sing a half note than it does an eighth note.
Now tempo is a tremendously important element in good platform work, for when a speaker delivers a whole address at very nearly the same rate of speed he is depriving himself of one of his chief means of emphasis and power. The baseball pitcher, the bowler
in cricket, the tennis server, all know